Behind the scenes: Creating carpet beds

Each year, Steve Chadwick, lead gardener at Edwards Gardens, a city-owned formal garden adjacent to the Toronto Botanical Garden, designs and creates two carpet beds near the main entrance to the parking lot. A carpet bed is a garden where fast-growing plants with specific characteristics are planted to create a design. It will often including logos and lettering.

Celebrating the Queen's Diamond JubileeThis year’s main bed commemorated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The garden, which is 37.5 feet wide and 12 feet deep featured 9,000 plants, including four different colours and varieties of dwarf alternanthera, santolina for the letters, with red begonias for the border.